


A Compliment

by Nebulad



Series: Awakening [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-27 01:51:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7598830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nebulad/pseuds/Nebulad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“When a memory is as real as life, it’s as valid as life. Thinking about a moment brings back the smell of cut grass; the warmth of another’s hand on yours; the taste of another’s tongue in your mouth,” he explained. Miriam felt her throat close up a little bit and swallowed back the <i>oh</i> of surprise that had almost slipped out. Considering her history, remembering kisses would be just as terrible as anything else— but something about the way he said it made it sound much better than alleyway gropings.</p><p>“No second chances at first impressions for drell, then?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Compliment

Miriam had been standing outside of Life Support for three minutes. She counted the seconds as they ticked by, her nerve alternately spiking enough to reach out to activate the door and plummeting low enough that she snatched her hand back to her hip at the last second. Thane was technically just as available as the rest of her crew, and he’d never given any indication that he’d wanted some special privacy or that her visits bothered him. His only request was somewhere dry so he could breathe, and he’d never _said_ she couldn’t visit him, and he was just a normal crew member.

Well he was an alien, so that was strange. Not bad strange, but the sort of strange where Miriam didn’t have a fucking clue what to say to him. What did you say to someone with absolutely zero familiar cultural landmarks? What did you say to someone who said things like _battle-sleep_ and _the Pact_ and… all these things that she had no context for?

She touched the door and it opened for her hand. She scurried in before she could change her mind, hastily sitting across from him. Thane opened his eyes and smiled at her, and he was just a perfectly normal crew member and she wasn’t… _into_ aliens. The Reds had taught her that, that humanity was the only race to rely on. You just couldn’t trust the dark pools of light in a drell’s eyes, or the precise curve of his mouth, or the kind look he always gave her…

Fucking _hell._

“Commander,” he greeted, and it _grated_ on her. Receiving her own command had been a dream come true and here she was, _embarrassed._ Commander was as far away from _yob_ as she could possibly get, and she suddenly hated it like she was fourteen and watching an Alliance parade from the roof of some condemned apartment building.

“Thane. I wanted to… talk. The last time we spoke you…” she trailed off because she hadn’t known _what_ he was doing, but whatever it was it upset him enough that he needed some time. There were random details recited like he was in a trance and… well it would have been rude to look it up. Rude and dangerous, considering the fact that EDI had access to their extranet history.

“ _That_ , yes. Drell have perfect memories. We can relive any moment of our lives with absolute clarity,” he told her. Then what he’d said before about sunset coloured eyes through a scope— that’d been a _memory,_ something he’d seen. Her instinct was to recoil because… well _,_ if she had to relive any part of her life in high definition… “It’s difficult to control at times,” he admitted at her probably-queasy look. “Some of us disappear into… let’s call it solipsism.”

Solipsism. Solipsism. _Mother of god Thane, my high school degree is fake and the Alliance really doesn’t do a thorough skill testing._ “Solipsism?” she asked, like she was asking him to clarify rather than flat out not knowing what the bloody word meant.

“When a memory is as real as life, it’s as valid as life. Thinking about a moment brings back the smell of cut grass; the warmth of another’s hand on yours; the taste of another’s tongue in your mouth,” he explained. Miriam felt her throat close up a little bit and swallowed back the _oh_ of surprise that had almost slipped out. Considering her history, remembering kisses would be just as terrible as anything else— but _something_ about the way he said it made it sound much better than alleyway gropings.

“No second chances at first impressions for drell, then?” _God_ she hoped the burning in her ears was just her imagination… or maybe he didn’t know why a human’s ears would suddenly turn vividly red at the mention of tongue kissing a drell. She tried to keep her hands away from her face because it really was a giveaway to avoid eye contact.

He leaned forward with a look on his face that told her he could read her like a book. _“Standing in the shadows of the staircase, difficult but not impossible to see. Dark hair and expensive armour, a human and two others like her. She rushes to the top of the stairs, impatient— trips on the last stair and catches herself on her hands. Bullets fly and she pretends as if she was ducking.”_ It was fascinating how his eyes moved around when he did that, like he was looking around in a still frame that she couldn’t see.

She opened her mouth to ask what that memory was when it hit her very suddenly. Dantius Towers. Nassana. _Miriam_ tripping up the bloody stairs. “Ohmygod.” It was also occurring to her that Thane could recall perfectly everything she said or did, which… really wouldn’t work out in her favour.

“I admit that I was comfortable, for a while, knowing that I only had to beat a team of humans to the target. You were more skilled than I gave you credit for.” He sat back, still comfortable despite the fact that Miriam was still very tangibly suffering.

“Who could blame you?”

“You made a much better impression once we reached the top of the building,” he added casually. “So I suppose to answer your question— when one memory is just as vivid as the other, you may get a second chance.”

“I think I shouted at you quite a bit when we… formally met.” Another sweeping victory for the great Commander Shepard. Trip up the stairs and then _snap_ at the man until he boarded the ship, for the inconvenience of having to chase him. He inclined his head.

“ _Impatient still, even having beaten me by a fraction of a second. Adequate distraction so long as she doesn’t_ look _at me when I drop. Kill the guards, kill Dantius— the human is shouting._ Prayers for the wicked _, I tell her, and she quiets down. A visible reaction to ritual, she casts her eyes downward and waits like a scolded child.”_

Miriam was quiet until she was sure he was finished. “I’m not sure I like _scolded child_ better,” she told him faintly. She hadn’t realized that she was so…. _blatant._ Aiza had been religious, the only thing she had safeguarded when she left her parent’s home. Miriam didn’t get it— she wasn’t sure she _felt_ it, and she couldn’t understand what the point of all the song and dance was, but it meant something to Aiza and… she liked it, frankly, even if it wasn’t something for girls like her. It was something small and lovely and untouched. Aiza told her that it couldn’t be touched, the _real thing_ was something inside you that reached out to touch what was inside another.

She was fairly certain that, like with many things, she didn’t have what everyone else seemed to have in the spot where it was supposed to be. The best she could do was to protect it in others.

“Impressions are difficult to convey over a translator. I thought it was interesting,” he corrected. “Everyone has their boundaries, buttons to push, and I was trained to notice them. That yours seemed similar to my own was interesting, and so far you have remained so.”

That was… an odd thing to say. She wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or not, because she sort of thought dead fauna was interesting in a way. A small part of her that was still wearing the platform boots was a little insulted. She wasn’t here to be fucking _interesting._ “Thank-you?” She folded her hands, hyper-aware that she’d gotten a little stiffer. Thane frowned.

“Translators,” he repeated. “I don’t think I’m saying what I want to. Humans come into very little contact with drell, so it isn’t surprising.”

“We can work on it,” she said, wondering just how she sounded to him if he was so _literal_ to her. Maybe drells simply didn’t have the concept of _repression_ or _uptightness_ or any of the unpleasant things she associated with herself _. Lucky him. Untrodden territory._

“We can,” he agreed. “And for what it’s worth, I’m… _trying_ to compliment you. You are nothing at all the way Cerberus described you.”

And how starved for positive reinforcement was she that _that_ set her to blushing again?

**Author's Note:**

> my sister just came in here to kill a spider for me and granted she probably did it because it's two am and i woke her up by stage whispering at her in the hallway but the fact is that the spider is dead and I didn't have to sleep in her room tonight. My writing blog is [here](http://nebulaad.tumblr.com) and is all organized and shit with fic and bonus shenanigans like art and screenshots and shit. It's great.


End file.
